Removing Voice Acting and Cinematics to reduce the costs of video games.

[krazykidd]

So theres a thread on the escapist that i found pretty interesting entitled : 'Price of Games Why whinge? Should their be a price Increase for games longer in development? ' which talks mainly about the prices of video games and several things that could and should influence them. That got me to thinking, would we as gamers be willing to play a game with little to no Voice acting and/ or cinematics? Now a days almost every game has wonderful ( and awe inspiring ) Cinematics and Great Voice acting, but the reality of the matter is , these things cost money ( ALOT of money ) .

Now money isn't an issue for all gamers . But let's just say a game has no Voice acting or Cinematics, the cost for developping said game will be lower, thus the price for the game on released SHOULD be lower also. Or on the other hand , if a game has no Voice acting or Cinematics, the time and money that would have been spent on those two aspects of the game , could be used on something else, like polishing the game , thus keeping the price the same , but having a better game, in the same amount of time.

So my question has 3 parts:

a) Would you Play a current gen AAA game with no Voice acting and no cinematics?

b)Would you be willing to sacrifice Voice acting and cinematics for a lower video game release price?

c)Would you Willing to sacrifice Voice acting and cinematics for a more polished game?


EDIT: For people that think that Voice acting takes away from Immersion , im guessing you guys don'T read BOOKS? you know that WALL OF TEXT between two covers that has a story , and a begining and an end? Books can be pretty immersive if you ask me , and no voice acting is required. Just an extra thought.

 

[No_Remainders]

A) Yes.

B) Yes.

C) Definitely yes.


Well, actually, thinking back, it really depends on the game.

For example, without voice acting, how do you know where to go? What if you're in the middle of a mission and it just assumes that you can figure out the direction to go by yourself, and you get lost? That'd kinda suck.

It depends on the game I guess.

 

[Kahunaburger]

Well, at least in RPGs you can make a very good case that things like voice acting and cinematics take a massive bite out of choice & consequence. [http://www.escapistmagazine.com/articles/view/columns/experienced-points/7588-Experienced-Points-Voice-vs-Choice]

 

[Serving UpSmiles]

Only if its Gears of War.

 

[Android2137]

a) Would you Play a current gen AAA game with no Voice acting and no cinematics?
Yes.

b)Would you be willing to sacrifice Voice acting and cinematics for a lower video game release price?
Very much yes.

c)Would you Willing to sacrifice Voice acting and cinematics for a more polished game?
In fact, why aren't they doing this?

 

[Keava]

No. No i would not. Not for an AAA title. Indie games, sure, i play them for innovation, humour and interesting approach to some of the technical issues, but when i buy an AAA title i want AAA production values and quality. I want good soundtrack, i want good voice overs and i do want stunning cinematics that i can gaze in awe at in between chapters/sections.

The price? I do not mind. I ear my money fair. I know which games i want to buy and play and which i can skip till they are discounted. There rarely is more than 7-8 games a year i do want to play so that's just merely around 33$ per month... not a lot really.

 

[Pedro The Hutt]

a) Would you Play a current gen AAA game with no Voice acting and no cinematics?
Depends on the game, but no, I like my voice acting in my story driven games that have already established themselves with strong voice acting. On the flipside I don't want the Legend of Zelda games to have any more voice acting than they currently do.

b)Would you be willing to sacrifice Voice acting and cinematics for a lower video game release price?
I refer you to my previous answer, Legend of Zelda barely uses voice acting and yet it has always cost as much as its peers. Little to no voice acting won't make video games cheaper. I'm pretty sure it's factored into the assigned budget. And you honestly can't take cutscenes away from all story driven games, they're an integral part of the experience, the Half-Life approach doesn't work for every game.

c)Would you be willing to sacrifice Voice acting and cinematics for a more polished game?
And again, what idea makes you think that no voice acting or cutscenes would make for a make a game more polished? There are plenty of polished games that have both voice acting and lengthy cutscenes and buggy titles that have only one or neither of those.

In short, your logic is highly flawed.

 

[Vrach]

Yeah, we should make movies black&white and soundless too, drop the price of movie tickets! Excellent idea!

If you've seen that thread, you might wanna look over a particular reply that's rightly pointing out that the industry has no issue whatsoever making money from games (talking mainstream triple A titles). So dropping the price is related to nothing but the publisher's choice. ActiVision will charge you the full 60$ to sell you a game that's a near copy paste experience of the last one, save for a 6 hour singleplayer campaign, a few updates that would normally be what a patch is responsible for and a map pack. Bethesda will put 5 years into making a game and charge you the same price. Content investment isn't what determines the price of games.

 

[Saelune]

Morrowind. Best game I ever played. Voice acting is minimal, and cinimatics? There is not even enough to count on my left hand.

So my answers is yes across the board.

 

[LobsterFeng]

Wait, I thought that we were trying to get better stories into videogames? It seems like doing that would just give us shiny HD versions of NES type games.

 

[Ace of Spades]

No, no, and no. If you remove voice acting and cinematics, then you have crippled the capacity for storytelling. I am not going to pay $60 for a game that just dumps a mountain of text on me. Some games can do it well, retro-style freeware games like Cave Story, or you could take the Skies of Arcadia route of using text, but including a few snippets of spoken dialogue to establish a character's voice and personality, but in a story driven game like Mass Effect, I expect characters to speak.

 

[Lucane]

I think you're looking at this with Hind-sight glasses on.

Just because a game has voice acting and cut scenes don't particularly mean it would be worth reducing the price of the game if never worked on them at all it'd just mean they'd have to sell a small total of units to cover the cost of making the game the cut scene designers wouldn't have to be people who work on any other parts of the game they'd just need input on what's happening before and after the scenes play and how things are going to look.

Voice Acting however would reduce cost and speed up production by not having recording sessions and lip syncing but falls under the aboves issues not having voice acting doesn't mean they have to reduce the price or would feel the need to.

 

[AnarchistFish]

Nope. I love cinematics and voice acting. Removing it would remove the depth and story of a game. I love that aspect.

 

[Fishyash]

I say yes to all 3 of those. Sure voice acting and cinematics are nice (TBH it wouldn't really be a AAA title without them) but they aren't necessary IMO. Text suffices for me, and if the game doesn't go for a cinematic experience, then we can definately do without voice acting.

However when games try to be like interactive movies, I don't really think it's a good idea to take out the cinematics and voice acting. (TBH I don't like games that are basically interactive movies).

 

[krazykidd]

c)Would you be willing to sacrifice Voice acting and cinematics for a more polished game?
And again, what idea makes you think that no voice acting or cutscenes would make for a make a game more polished? There are plenty of polished games that have both voice acting and lengthy cutscenes and buggy titles that have only one or neither of those.

In short, your logic is highly flawed.

Im not saying that there aren't , what im saying is , if developers , took out voice acting and cutscene , well the time and money to make said game would be considerably less, which could later be used to polish a game MORE than they would originally.

I think you're looking at this with Hind-sight glasses on.



Voice Acting however would reduce cost and speed up production by not having recording sessions and lip syncing but falls under the aboves issues not having voice acting doesn't mean they have to reduce the price or would feel the need to.

Well it's just an idea i was throwing out, without voice acting, the cost to make the game would be less, and the game wouldn't need to be 60$ new to break even . Not to say that they don'T make money on it because they do make money and alot , just that a new game wouldn't need to be 60$ on release.

 

[Blackpapa]

Absolutely not. How can you have a decent storyline or narrative without voice acting?! It's impossible.

BRB right after I go burn some more books.

 

[Dreiko_v1legacy]

Depends on the genre, if it's story-heavy then some level of cinematics is needed. As for voice acting, I buy imports JUST to get the original Japanese voice acting on my games, so that should tell you how I feel about dubbed in English games, in fact I did turn off the voices in Dragon Quest VIII.

 

[skywolfblue]

a) Would you Play a current gen AAA game with no Voice acting and no cinematics?

No.

b)Would you be willing to sacrifice Voice acting and cinematics for a lower video game release price?

No.

c)Would you Willing to sacrifice Voice acting and cinematics for a more polished game?

No.



Imagine Mass Effect, Half Life 2 without voice acting...

Alyx Vance stares blankely at you, Dr. Breen's face appears on the combine console but instead of actually talking, some boring text devoid of all the context a voice imparts appears on screen.

No fast talking hyperactive Mordin, no aggressive talking Grunt / Wrex, no swaggering kirk-esque speeches from commander Sheppard. That would be horrid.

 

[Rhatar Khurin]

I generally skip story in any game i play anyway, cinematics i quite like though.

So sure

 

[Dreiko_v1legacy]

I generally skip story in any game i play anyway, cinematics i quite like though.

So sure

I don't know why I find this so problematic....if you don't like story why play games with story? Unless all you play is FPSs that don't really have a story worth anyone's time or games like Diablo I find this quite troubling.